Comments: 2 Responses to “How Do I Recover Pics From Time Machine?”

OK, so you want to access an old hard drive with old Time Machine backups and see if you can find a picture in your Photos (or iPhoto) library.
If you look on that old drive, you should see a backups folder and then maybe a folder in it with your computer name. Then folders in that with dates. It will vary depending on what version of OS X was used at the time.
Look at those dated folders and find the most recent one. Dig into there. You may have to dig down to folders with the name of your drive, then the Users folder, then your named user folder, then eventually you’ll find one with Desktop, Documents, etc.
There should be a Pictures folder there. The pictures folder is the default location for iPhoto and Photos libraries. If you didn’t keep it there, then look for the folder where you put it instead.
When you look in the Pictures folder, you will hopefully see that old library you want. It is a “package” file. So Control+Click it and select Show Package Contents.
Now it depends on whether this is an iPhoto or Photos library. But either way you’ll have to dig around in there for that photo in the library structure. Hopefully you’ll find what you want after taking the time to look around.
Then I would simply copy those files to a temporary folder on your Desktop. After you have gathered them there, unmount the old backup drive. Then drag and drop the files in the temporary folder into your current Photos library.